Natural Selection 2: Now Run by the Community

You probably don’t know the developers Unknown Worlds by name, but you might know of their most popular game: Natural Selection 2, a clever class-based FPS/RTS where two opposing player teams face off, one composed of soldiers and the other of aliens, both under the command of another player who orders the construction of building, directs solders, and demands research.   It’s a fun game, and it’s got quite a following over Steam , and Unknown Worlds have earned a solid bunch of street cred for not only allowing for female avatars in their game (a feature depressingly absent from many FPS titles) but also for releasing periodic updates full of new content that are free for the whole community.

But as nice as that is, they are a small team, and they can’t update Natural Selection 2 forever.  As their focus shifts to their new sandbox underwater exploration game Subnautica, they’ll have to stop giving time and attention to Natural Selection 2.  Fortunately, because they are cool people and do cool things, that doesn’t mean the game has seen its last patch.



In fact, the team at Unknown Worlds handed the Dev keys over to 14 Natural Selection 2 players around the world—a community team of voluntary developers called NS2CDT—who will now be taking full control of the games content.

"It means that now with Unknown World's blessing, we as a community can forge patch 266. We can hopefully start to incorporate the best the community has to offer, such as bug fixes and popular features...with many more ideas for the future!" announced an NS2CDT dev in a forum post.

"For the everyday player, they can now rest easy knowing that NS2's future developments will be in the trusted hands of a team of experienced NS2 players just like them, who only wish to see NS2 become bigger and better than ever before! There is potential for greatness, but we will have many hurdles to overcome along the way. While these things take time to implement and grow, we plan on being very open with what we are actively working on. Afterall, it is by the community, for the community!"

This is encouraging news for any PC gamer—all too often a game will simply die off unless there’s a healthy community of modders to keep the content fresh—and the fact that Unknown Worlds both acknowledges this and embraces it means that Natural Selection 2 will remain fresh and current for as long as there’s an invested community. 

I wish more games would follow that example.